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Savannah back to normal after St. Patrick's Day

Azaleas along River Street were in full bloom Sunday, where St. Patrick's Day crowds had thinned considerably. (Photo by Carl Elmore/For the Savannah Morning News)

Royal Restrooms owners David Sauers, at left, and Robert Glisson clear River Street barricades Sunday afternoon, as thinning crowds no longer needed portable toilets. (Photo by Carl Elmore/For the Savannah Morning News)

Subdogs Hotdoggery owner Matt Jording and his wife Carol Jording considered their first Savannah St. Patrick's Day a success. (Photo by Carl Elmore/For the Savannah Morning News)

Saturday saw what may have been the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Savannah’s history.

Cars were parked east of the Truman Parkway ramps off President Street before the parade, and it took some motorists an hour or more to get out of downtown afterward as roadways were cleared.

And in the early hours of Sunday, police advised partiers to steer clear of downtown because an over-capacity crowd had overwhelmed Broughton, Bay and River streets from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to East Broad Street, creating gridlock for drivers looking to park.

On Sunday afternoon, things were almost back to normal. City spokesman Bret Bell said street sweepers were up and at it clearing off River Street at 3 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.

“I call it the St. Patrick’s Day miracle that every morning it looks like there has not been a quarter of a million people there,” Bell said.

And for the most part, the many thousands of partiers behaved pretty well. Savannah-Chatham police spokeswoman Gena Sullivan said Sunday morning police had made 31 arrests during the festival period. By contrast, the four-day festival period last year netted 190 arrests.

“It seemed like it was a well-behaved crowd, especially for a warm day,” Bell said. “People tend to get more energetic when it’s warm.”

Bell said he felt the festivities were a huge success, and acknowledged a little room for improvement.

“Traffic never moves exactly how we want it to move,” he said. “But we are an old city and the fact that we accommodated that many people without any major incidents is pretty remarkable.”

St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee Chairman Michael Foran said the response thus far has been positive.

“I’m 54; I’ve never missed a parade,” Foran said. “... And I’ve never seen the crowds like I’ve seen this year.”

Open for business

While many businesses in Savannah close shop for St. Patrick’s Day, others welcome the rush.

SubDogs HotDoggery at 5 W. Broughton St. first opened its doors in September. Owners Matt and Carol Jording had never been to Savannah on St. Patrick’s Day before. They knew they had a busy couple of days in store, but they didn’t know just quite how busy they would be.

“(Carol) and I were in here at 8 a.m. (Saturday) ... and we did not stop until 2:30 in the morning,” Matt Jording said.

Initially, the Jordings planned to stop serving food at 3 a.m. Sunday, do an hour or so of clean-up, and then open right back up for breakfast.

“We didn’t have any stuff left,” Matt Jording said. “We ran our breakfast items as a special last night and they sold out. ... It was way busier than I thought it would be.”

In all, the Jordings estimated they sold about 2,000 hot dogs from the time they opened Saturday morning until they closed Sunday morning.

The Jordings opened SubDogs’ bathroom to help the city out, and they were rewarded with a business opportunity.

“It got to the point where the line for the bathroom got so long that by the time they were through they’d already bought two or three beers and a hot dog because we started serving that as like a table-service type thing,” Matt Jording said.

The Boiler Room on Williamson Street just opened in December, but owner Stephen Barnhill, a veteran Savannah bartender, was prepared for St. Patrick’s Day.

“It went incredible,” he said. “It was very busy. We had over 3,000 people throughout the whole day.”

The only setback for the bar came around 9 p.m.

“We ordered a hundred cases of green Bud Light and we sold out,” Barnhill said. “Luckily we had some regular Bud Light and we didn’t run out of that.”

Fire Street Food on East Perry Street opened just three days before the parade. For less-experienced restaurant owners it could have been a nightmare, but Ele and Sean Tran, who own three other restaurants in the area, were up to the challenge.

“Overall, it was exhausting but it was fun,” Ele Train said on Sunday afternoon.

From the time Fire Street Food opened at 9:30 a.m. Saturday until it closed around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, the flow of customers was steady.

“A lot of people said they came at 6 o’clock in the morning, 4 o’clock in the morning, so they were hungry already, and they wanted to use the bathroom,” said Ele Tran, who had planned to keep serving until 3 a.m. Sunday.

“We ran out of everything,” including napkins and to-go boxes, she said. “That’s why we closed down early.”

Well, almost everything. “We were OK with the cups because I ordered 7,000 cups,” she said.

Downtown arrest tally

Savannah-Chatham police reported 31 arrests went through processing centers on River Street and St. Julian Street during the festival period as of Sunday morning.

• Disorderly conduct — nine arrests

• Battery — seven arrests

• Public urination — five arrests

• Obstruction — three arrests

• Striking a law enforcement animal — one arrest

• Reckless conduct — one arrest

• Criminal trespass — one arrest

• Larceny from a building — one arrest

• Marijuana less than one ounce — one arrest

• Open container — one arrest

• Begging — one arrest

Drummer who died in parade identified

The Second Time Arounders Marching Band drummer who died of an apparent heart attack on the parade route Saturday was Rick Sowers of St. Petersburg, Fla., said the band’s director, William Findeison.

“It has taken the band aback because he was a really popular guy,” Findeison said from his home in Florida on Sunday. “We suffer the hurt and move on.”

Findeison said Sowers was a sailing instructor in his 50s who had a passion for the snare drum.

“He was a working man with a family, got the time off and was doing what he loved,” Findeison said. “When it’s your time, that’s one way to go, I suppose.”

Sowers collapsed about noon on Bull Street near West Oglethorpe Lane, four blocks from the end of the parade route. Two doctors and several nurses in the vicinity rushed to assist Sowers before he was taken away by ambulance.

“I’m very sorry for (Sowers’) family,” said St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee Chairman Michael Foran. “The only good thing I can make of it besides it being an act of God is that he died doing what he loved to do.”